Cue 2

The beauty of the semiotic wound will never be revealed if the artist doesn’t go to extremes such as the cases of Chris Burden, Marina Abramovic and David Nebreda. In spite of the fantastic myths: Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Bruce Louden and John Fare, only Yukio Mishima and possibly also Bas Jan Ader, died as a direct result of their own private theatre. The danger often lies in the psychical realm; often as it’s represented through the written word. Literature has left the deepest wounds and the most beautiful scars. In the profound analysis of one’s own sublime desire, the author is destined to descend the bottomless pits without safety-strings, without the knowledge if he’ll ever make it back to the surface again. To authors such as Sade, Lautreamont, Céline and Artaud, the creative process became almost unbearable, and at times almost annihilating. The great descending; to never look back; those beautiful depths penetrated and revealed in the words of Baudelaire, Strindberg, Genet and Mishima.

When Sarah Kane writes “There isn’t anything you can’t represent on stage”, she’s got my admission. Sadly enough, it seems like this ambitious craving can never be fully satisfied. In a British production of Kane’s Cleansed, the “blood” was substituted with serpentines, as a way to “desensitise” the experience. So, what’s left when the violence has been desensitised? I would not say that I’m all too familiar with Kane’s intentions, but what demands to be represented on stage, hasn’t been represented yet. This leaves us with the written instructions of the actual drama - fantasy - with pure, concentrated, uncorrupted words and the images they conjure up. Only words can liberate the artist from morals, conventions and human rights – all that must be cast aside; that he can lose himself in the impossible experience.When Hermann Nitsch writes about using the corpses of dead boys, I take him literally. When I witness the animal carcasses and the blood in his actions, I always imagine the picture of the disemboweled “six-year-old”. But the actual action is a limitation, a maimed version that never will be realised. Still, the vision lives on and keeps its artistic authenticity on paper. Although, the text must be written as if the author had the intention to realise it in the flesh, on stage, or in front of the camera; it should neither be impossible to realise in a strictly practical way, but still comes short because it involves the “freedom” of other people. Once in my life, I want to experience a drama, performance-piece, or film which has been directed by a full-fledged sadist. A work in which the cast either consist of willingly masochists, but more preferably of involuntarily victims; a production in which the sadist is locked within his own pathological trap: his own private implosion which evolves into explosive expression; the balance between instant sexual gratification and the sublime aesthetic immortality; the carnal itch caught somewhere in middle of what’s sacred and profane, now concentrated in the eye of the camera, which reflects the terror through the eyes of the crew.

mjbladh@hotmail.com